The term 'being moved' occupies a distinctive and contested position within the depth-psychology corpus, operating simultaneously as a phenomenological description, an aesthetic category, and a philosophical problem about the nature of soul and motion. Aristotle's De Anima establishes the foundational tension: is the soul 'directly moved' or only 'incidentally moved,' and what does it mean for psychic states—pain, pleasure, anger, thought—to constitute modes of movement? This classical problematic resonates forward into contemporary empirical aesthetics, where Menninghaus and Bannister treat being moved as an exemplary aesthetic emotion, irreducible to simple valence, combining joy and sadness in ways that produce qualitatively distinct phenomenological states. The social-relational dimension of being moved has attracted particular theoretical interest: communal sharing relations, empathic concern, and social separation all figure as candidate mechanisms for the intensified states that attend aesthetic chills, tears, and kama muta. A crucial axis of debate concerns whether being moved is a unitary construct or encompasses phenomenologically distinct sub-types—joyful versus sad moving, warm versus cold chills—each with different eliciting conditions, bodily signatures, and relational contexts. The stakes of this conceptual work are high: being moved marks the threshold where aesthetic reception, social bonding, and somatic response converge, making it a nodal concept for any serious account of aesthetic emotion.
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in the case of the aesthetic emotion terms that are linguistically based on ordinary emotion terms (i.e., being moved, surprise amazement, awe, etc.), the aesthetically evaluative dimension mostly comes not as an alternative to, or instead of, the nonaesthetic meaning of that emotion term, but on top of it.
Menninghaus argues that being moved functions as both an ordinary emotion and an aesthetic evaluative category simultaneously, making it paradigmatic of aesthetic emotion.
Menninghaus, Winfried, What Are Aesthetic Emotions?, 2015thesis
there are two main variations of moving experiences, namely being joyfully or sadly moved. Being joyfully moved may be in response to positive events within negative contexts (reunion after a long separation), whereas being sadly moved may be elicited by negative events within positive contexts.
Bannister identifies two phenomenologically distinct modes of being moved—joyful and sad—each defined by the valence relationship between event and context.
Bannister, Scott, Distinct varieties of aesthetic chills in response to multimedia, 2019thesis
An alternative account of aesthetic chills is concerned with social processes, referring to theories or constructs such as social separation, being moved, and communal sharing relations; in contrast to fear and vigilance processes, this account may explain associations between chills and lyrics in music, films, poetry and religious, communal experiences.
Being moved is positioned as the core construct in a social-process account of aesthetic chills, linking it to communal sharing, social separation, and reunion dynamics.
Bannister, Scott, Distinct varieties of aesthetic chills in response to multimedia, 2019thesis
whilst CSRs offer a broad psychological mechanism for various states of being moved, kama muta, and related emotional experiences such as nostalgia and elevation, it is crucial to develop an understanding of the qualitative differences regarding how exactly CSRs are intensified.
Bannister situates being moved within a broader family of communal-sharing responses, arguing that phenomenological distinctions within the construct remain insufficiently theorized.
Bannister, Scott, Distinct varieties of aesthetic chills in response to multimedia, 2019supporting
Recognizing the double sense of 'being moved', what we have to consider now is whether the soul is 'directly moved' and participates in such direct movement.
Aristotle introduces the foundational philosophical distinction between direct and incidental senses of being moved as applied to the soul, establishing the conceptual framework for all subsequent psychic motion debates.
We may admit to the full that being pained or pleased, or thinking, are movements (each of them a 'being moved'), and that the movement is originated by the soul.
Aristotle proposes that affective states such as pain, pleasure, and thought constitute modes of being moved, locating the soul as their originating source.
if the substance of the soul just consists in moving itself, then its being moved will not be an accidental feature of it, as it is of whiteness or being three cubits long.
Aristotle argues that if self-motion is essential to the soul, then being moved belongs to it necessarily rather than accidentally, raising the question of the soul's spatial and ontological status.
warm chills were experiences accompanied by positively valenced feelings such as joy, stimulation and relaxation... whereas cold chills reflect sadly moving scenarios, consistently elicited by events that more readily invite empathic concern.
Empirical differentiation of warm and cold chills maps onto joyfully and sadly moving scenarios respectively, providing physiological correlates for the phenomenological distinction.
Bannister, Scott, Distinct varieties of aesthetic chills in response to multimedia, 2019supporting
the narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the participants to identification with the hero.
Jung describes the numinous grip of collective ritual as an analogue to being moved, linking it to social identification and the transformation of individual impotence through mythic participation.
Jung, C.G., The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams, 1957aside